"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).

Wednesday, October 09, 2013

Sophocles, Ajax

These are some notes on the translation of Ajax in Sophocles, Ajax, Electra, Oedipus Tyrannus. Edited and Translated by Hugh Lloyd-Jones (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), a volume in the Loeb Classical Library series.

For this reason there is no man mighty enough to bury this body, but he shall be cast out upon the pale sand and become prey for the birds along the coast. Why, if we could not rule him while he was alive, at least we shall rule him now that he is dead, even if you do not wish it, controlling with our hands.

I could never again wonder at a man's doing wrong who was nothing on account of birth, when they who are thought to be nobly born go wrong in talk by uttering words like these. Come, tell me over again, do you say you brought this man here as an ally for the Argives?

At line 1093 Ll-J doesn't translate the vocative ἄνδρες. This omission obscures somewhat the fact that in lines 1093-1096 Teucer is speaking to the chorus, but in lines 1097 ff. to Menelaus. Cf. line 1318, where Ll-J does translate the vocative ἄνδρες as "sirs" (Odysseus addressing the chorus).

Ll-J doesn't translate the vocative in line 1321 (ἄναξ Ὀδυσσεῦ = lord Odysseus), although he does translate the same form of address, at the same position in the line, in line 1316 (spoken by the chorus). Agamemnon is deferential to Odysseus throughout, and the polite vocative here emphasizes his deference.

[Y]et, for all that he was such toward me, never would I requite him with indignity, or refuse to avow that, in all our Greek host which came to Troy, I have seen none who was his peer, except Achilles.